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The Good Death
- An Exploration of Dying in America
- Narrated by: Suzanne Toren
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
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Publisher's summary
Following the death of her father, journalist and hospice volunteer Ann Neumann sets out to examine what it means to die well in the United States. When Ann Neumann's father was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, she left her job and moved back to her hometown of Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She became his full-time caregiver - cooking, cleaning, and administering medications. When her father died, she was undone by the experience, by grief and the visceral quality of dying. Neumann struggled to put her life back in order and found herself haunted by a question: Was her father's death a good death?
The way we talk about dying and the way we actually die are two very different things, she discovered, and many of us are shielded from what death actually looks like. To gain a better understanding, Neumann became a hospice volunteer and set out to discover what a good death is today. She attended conferences, academic lectures, and grief sessions in church basements. She went to Montana to talk with the attorney who successfully argued for the legalization of aid in dying, and to Scranton, Pennsylvania, to listen to "pro-life" groups who believe the removal of feeding tubes from some patients is tantamount to murder. Above all, she listened to the stories of those who were close to death.
What Neumann found is that death in contemporary America is much more complicated than we think. Medical technologies and increased life expectancies have changed the very definition of medical death. And although death is our common fate, it is also a divisive issue that we all experience differently. What constitutes a good death is unique to each of us, depending on our age, race, economic status, culture, and beliefs. What's more, differing concepts of choice, autonomy, and consent make death a contested landscape, governed by social, medical, legal, and religious systems.
In these words, Neumann brings us intimate portraits of the nurses, patients, bishops, bioethicists, and activists who are shaping the way we die. The Good Death presents a fearless examination of how we approach death and how those of us close to dying loved ones live in death's wake.
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The Lives They Left Behind
- Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic
- By: Peter Stastny, Darby Penney
- Narrated by: Alex Paul
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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More than four hundred abandoned suitcases filled with patients’ belongings were found when Willard Psychiatric Center closed in 1995 after 125 years of operation. They are skillfully examined here and compared to the written record to create a moving—and devastating—group portrait of twentieth-century American psychiatric care.
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Not really the book I expected
- By B. Shaff on 11-09-17
By: Peter Stastny, and others
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How to Survive a Plague
- The Inside Story of How Citizens and Science Tamed AIDS
- By: David France
- Narrated by: Rory O'Malley
- Length: 24 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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A riveting, powerful telling of the story of the grassroots movement of activists, many of them in a life-or-death struggle, who seized upon scientific research to help develop the drugs that turned HIV from a mostly fatal infection to a manageable disease. Ignored by public officials, religious leaders, and the nation at large, and confronted with shame and hatred, this small group of men and women chose to fight for their right to live by educating themselves and demanding to become full partners in the race for effective treatments.
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Read This Book!
- By Kay M Hawklee on 05-30-17
By: David France
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Doctored
- The Disillusionment of an American Physician
- By: Sandeep Jauhar
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 10 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Hoping for the stability he needs to start a family, Sandeep Jauhar, an attending cardiologist, accepts a position at a massive teaching hospital on the outskirts of Queens. With a decade's worth of elite medical training behind him, he is eager to settle down and reap the rewards of countless sleepless nights. Instead, he is confronted with sobering truths. Doctors' morale is low and getting lower.
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Frank, inside perspective on the follies of unintended consequences in medical reform
- By JW on 02-25-18
By: Sandeep Jauhar
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Black Man in a White Coat
- A Doctor's Reflections on Race and Medicine
- By: Damon Tweedy M.D.
- Narrated by: Corey Allen
- Length: 8 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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When Damon Tweedy begins medical school, he envisions a bright future where his segregated, working-class background will become largely irrelevant. Instead, he finds that he has joined a new world where race is front and center. The recipient of a scholarship designed to increase black student enrollment, Tweedy soon meets a professor who bluntly questions whether he belongs in medical school, a moment that crystallizes the challenges he will face throughout his career.
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Absolutely eye opening!
- By Kelene on 02-23-16
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Falling into the Fire
- A Psychiatrist's Encounters with the Mind in Crisis
- By: Christine Montross
- Narrated by: Christine Montross
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Falling into the Fire is psychiatrist Christine Montross's thoughtful investigation of the gripping patient encounters that have challenged and deepened her practice. Beautifully written, deeply felt, Falling into the Fire brings us inside the doctor’s mind, illuminating the grave human costs of mental illness as well as the challenges of diagnosis and treatment. At once rigorous and meditative, Falling into the Fire is an intimate portrait of psychiatry, allowing the reader to witness the humanity of the practice and the enduring mysteries of the mind.
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Buy this book! and READ it
- By joyce on 08-15-13
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The Theater of War
- What Ancient Greek Tragedies Can Teach Us Today
- By: Bryan Doerries
- Narrated by: Adam Driver
- Length: 5 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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This compassionate, personal, and illuminating work of nonfiction draws on the author's celebrated work as a director of socially conscious theater to connect listeners with the power of an ancient artistic tradition. For years Bryan Doerries has been producing ancient tragedies for current and returned servicemen and women, addicts, tornado and hurricane victims, and a wide range of other at-risk people in society.
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Wow
- By Marisa on 11-09-15
By: Bryan Doerries
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Bad Faith
- When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine
- By: Paul A. Offit MD
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 7 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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In recent years there have been major outbreaks of whooping cough among children in California, mumps in New York, and measles in Ohio's Amish country - despite the fact that these are all vaccine-preventable diseases. Although America is the most medically advanced place in the world, many people disregard modern medicine in favor of using their faith to fight life-threatening illnesses. In 21st-century America, how could this be happening?
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Odd
- By airmom on 04-12-17
By: Paul A. Offit MD
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Truth Doesn't Have a Side
- My Alarming Discovery About the Danger of Contact Sports
- By: Dr. Bennet Omalu, Mark Tabb, Will Smith - foreword
- Narrated by: Ron Butler
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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One day in 2002 the 50-year old body of former Pittsburgh Steeler and hall of famer Mike Webster was laid on a cold table in front of pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu. Webster's body looked to Omalu like the body of a much older man, and the circumstances of his behavior prior to his death were clouded in mystery. But when Omalu cut into Webster's brain, it appeared to be normal. Something didn't add up.
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Truly Enlightening
- By Marie on 01-31-20
By: Dr. Bennet Omalu, and others
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God's Hotel
- A Doctor, a Hospital, and a Pilgrimage to the Heart of Medicine
- By: Victoria Sweet
- Narrated by: Victoria Sweet
- Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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San Francisco's Laguna Honda Hospital is the last almshouse in the country, a descendant of the Hôtel-Dieu (God's hotel) that cared for the sick in the Middle Ages. Ballet dancers and rock musicians, professors and thieves - "anyone who had fallen, or, often, leapt, onto hard times" and needed extended medical care - ended up here. So did Victoria Sweet, who came for two months and stayed for 20 years. Laguna Honda, lower-tech but human-paced, gave Sweet the opportunity to practice a kind of attentive medicine that has almost vanished.
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Great read
- By kayla solomon on 04-08-17
By: Victoria Sweet
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The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
- A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
- By: Anne Fadiman
- Narrated by: Pamela Xiong
- Length: 13 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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When three-month-old Lia Lee arrived at the county hospital emergency room in Merced, California, a chain of events was set in motion from which neither she nor her parents nor her doctors would ever recover. Lia's parents, Foua and Nao Kao, were part of a large Hmong community in Merced, refugees from the CIA-run "Quiet War" in Laos.
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Good audiobook but narrator struggles with basic pronunciation
- By Kate on 06-04-15
By: Anne Fadiman
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Five Days at Memorial
- Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital
- By: Sheri Fink
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 17 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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After Hurricane Katrina struck and power failed, amid rising floodwaters and heat, exhausted staff at Memorial Medical Center designated certain patients last for rescue. Months later, a doctor and two nurses were arrested and accused of injecting some of those patients with life-ending drugs.
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Five Days in Hell/Years in Purgatory
- By Cynthia on 09-15-13
By: Sheri Fink
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Teeth
- The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America
- By: Mary Otto
- Narrated by: Suehyla El'Attar
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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Teeth takes listeners on a disturbing journey into America's silent epidemic of oral disease, exposing the hidden connections between tooth decay and stunted job prospects, low educational achievement, social mobility, and the troubling state of our public health.
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Content everyone should know; dismal narration
- By Elaine on 08-04-17
By: Mary Otto
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Your Heart, My Hands
- An Immigrant's Remarkable Journey to Become One of America's Preeminent Cardiac Surgeons
- By: Arun K. Singh MD, John Hanc - contributor, Delos Cosgrove MD - foreword
- Narrated by: Shridhar Solanki
- Length: 8 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Leaving a life marked by crippling setbacks and his father's doubt, in 1967 a 20-something doctor from India arrived in America with only five dollars and the desire to claim his American dream. Faced with an entirely new culture, racism, and the lasting effects of disabling childhood injuries, through hard work and perseverance he overcame all odds. Now having performed over 15,000 open-heart surgeries, more than nearly every surgeon in history, Dr. Singh reflects on his most memorable patients and his incredible personal life.
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Remarkable!
- By Stacey on 12-01-22
By: Arun K. Singh MD, and others
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The Desperate Hours
- One Hospital's Fight to Save a City on the Pandemic's Front Lines
- By: Marie Brenner
- Narrated by: Kirsten Potter
- Length: 15 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
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In the spring of 2020, COVID-19 arrived in New York City. Before long, America’s largest metropolis was at war against a virus that mercilessly swept through its five boroughs. In The Desperate Hours, award-winning journalist Marie Brenner, having been granted unprecedented 18-month access to the entire New York-Presbyterian hospital system, tells the story of the doctors, nurses, residents, researchers, and suppliers who tried to save lives across Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn and the northern periphery of the city.
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Way too much politics
- By Josh on 07-18-22
By: Marie Brenner
What listeners say about The Good Death
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- z c
- 09-17-20
great book
a must-read for anyone interested in or actively participating in the death positive movement. beautifully written and wonderfully read. informative.
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- Jacob
- 01-15-23
Fascinating and Insightful
I really enjoyed this book. I lost my mother to pancreatic cancer when she was 54. This book is a must read — considering your own death, and really makes you consider what “a good death” means to you.
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- Red-Haired Ash
- 08-13-21
Informative but has some issues
3 stars - I liked it
In The Good Death, journalist and hospice volunteer Ann Neumann examines what it means to die in the United States. She discusses end-of-life care, right to die, medical ethics, starvation deaths, and other aspects of what it could mean to die in America.
This book was very interesting because it looks at how your wishes for death may not always happen, even if you have the paperwork to prove that is your wish. I found the discussions of how hospitals can easily ignore your wishes, especially if you end up brain dead or on incubators to live. Even if your legal guardian shows proof that you want the plug pulled, organizations and even the hospitals will use whatever means they can to prevent it, like in the Terri Schiavo case.
I learned a lot from this book about right-to-die legislation, starvation deaths, and other legal aspects of dying. It really shows me that I need to start on a will and death care paperwork as soon as possible because you never know when an accident might happen. I do have a few issues with some of the discussions in this book. This book doesn’t really go into statistics or experiences of the BIPOC since all her in depth discussions are about cases involving white people.
Another issue was that she discussed a confrontation she had with a disabled blogger who was against her views because he was concerned about his personal safety when it came to right-to-die legislation. They do meet and form a friendship, but her tone and discussion of this man, and other disabled people, was very ablest and at times very negative. She never seemed to understand the blogger's concern about her views, which was disappointing considering she became friends with him.
My last issue with this book was in Chapter 8, she discussed meeting an inmate through hospice and that he sent her a letter about his experiences and life since their meeting. He asks her to reply but she wouldn't respond to him. I understand that a nurse told her that inmates wouldn’t be able to get letters but she never confirms that with the actual rules of the prison. She then goes on to discuss the compassion needed for dealing with end-of-life patients but still refuses to try to write to the one prisoner who was reaching out to her. It was very jarring to see her preach about compassion but ignore someone who was reaching out for it.
Overall, this was an interesting book but it does have its flaws. I learned a lot about end-of-life care and legislation but this is only a tiny portion of what the health care system is like. I would really love to see a follow up book, or another author, write about BIPOC experiences and disabled experiences. If this book is already written, please let me know because I would love to read it.
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- Laura V
- 09-06-22
Good inffo. struggled with narration
So I bought the book. good for reference anyway. and print us easier for reference
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- Bessie Mae
- 03-24-21
Should Be Titled "Busted Social Systems"
This book was okay. I think it is somewhat mistitled, as it ranges more widely than just death. It's also about the well-intentioned nightmare of the medical system, the horrors of the prison system, and the controversies over disability.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Towanda
- 09-15-22
A Learning Experience
This story opened up my eyes to dying. I don't have to worry about anyone fighting for my life. I know there's no guarantee I won't end up at a Catholic hospital. But, it's amazing how people play God. What's the sense in writing out what you want or how your should end without people staying in their own lane? This is a good read or audible. I learned a lot about death and hospice.
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- Jessica Hisle
- 12-19-20
Wonderful Book!
This is such an excellent book. It is easy to listen to and extremely eye opening.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Corinna Verdugo
- 08-26-22
Interesting discussion on end-of life issues
I loved the narration and pacing. I often feel nonfiction books are better for reading than listening, but it was easy to follow this one as an audiobook. I have read a few other books about death and dying in US society and found this one to be a valuable addition. We will all have to face this multiple times in our lives with family and friends, and ultimately ourselves. I found the clear-eyed discussion of hospice care particularly interesting, and enjoyed the chapters on disability rights advocates as well. Highly recommend!
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- Ingrid
- 09-30-17
A sensitive, informative important work.
Without having read other books on the subject I am glad that this is the first. Getting to an age where this is inevitable with people I've come to care about and miraculously having escaped that for the better part of my life, I can think of no better way to cultivate awareness on this ever so important subject. The few people I've I know who have died are still so present in my mind and heart. When you're from another country, and people die, if you don't get to travel to their funeral, it oddly feels like they've never passed but that you'll just go back and see them again when you travel back there. It's an odd feeling because logic dictates that you know the truth and what's happened. People can still however remain very alive in your mind. This book is a very helpful preparation for the inevitable that I will face and I've come to face recently given a certain circumstance. Ms. Newman takes so many factors into account that are important to consider on this subject. For me she had made learning or experiencing more about this subject more accessible and contextualized. For that, I thank her. Reading/listening to this book felt like time very well spent.
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- Bruce Cline
- 02-01-24
Loved discussion about Not Dead Yet organization
An interesting, wide-ranging discussion of death. Sometimes the author gets a bit far afield, but good nonetheless.
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